Spin/swim

I feel somewhat discombobulated! Good exercise, but not in the amounts/order I would ideally have preferred. I slept late and just about made it to Joanna's spin class at 10 downtown. It was amazing, but HARD - we did 3 x 12min (3min seated endurance i.e. zone 2, 3min standing in higher gear i.e. zone 3-4, 3min seated climb at that gear i.e. z3-4, then 3min as :30 sprint, :30 recovery - right away in z4 with a view to climbing to 5b). Trembling with fatigue by end of last one!

Should have gotten to the gym an hour earlier to do first hour of spin before class - Joanna rightly follows rule that teacher locks spin studio when leaving (really we all know the combination), so once I'd exited, I couldn't motivate to do another hour, especially as something is not quite right with the back of my left knee - it felt weird and hyperextended a couple weeks ago, and I've had some twinges since.

(Usually there is 11am spin as well, but it's canceled for the holiday. I am not keen on holiday weekends!)

So I showered and ate a snack and paid my membership renewal, then walked (after finding that I had not put my Metrocard back in my wallet, arghh!) over to John Jay. It must be at least 2 miles, it took a bit longer than I thought (it is disgustingly humid, I was dripping with sweat even at walking pace), so I got in slightly late, but made it up by staying in for the warmup chunk of the subsequent practice.

It was the "Low-Pressure Zone" workout, which I thought just meant all lanes on slow intervals but which in fact was mostly drill work, which I love and which is certainly much to the point at this stage - we were working on stroke length in particular (a "1-2" drill that involved a bit of glide on each stroke, a lot of stroke count work, etc.). Can't at all say totals, but will give this estimate:

300 free warmup

c. 1200 mostly freestyle drills

+ 800 as 300 every 3rd length back, 300 every 3rd length fly drill (3-3-3), 2 x 100 IM no breast (the bit of breaststroke kick I'd done earlier was pronging the back of my knee, so I didn't want to do any more damage).

Knee thing definitely still not right. I should do a 2hr run later, but it will be counterproductive if it does anything bad to the knee, so I will do some stretching this afternoon and see how I feel. I know I always FAIL to get up early, but tomorrow morning I really do want to get up early and do 1.5-2hr ride in park (retrieved tri bike from store yesterday) - there is no point going later in the day, it just gets way too crowded in Central Park, so I think I will take the attitude of getting up at 6, riding 6:30-8:30 and then coming home and going back to bed!

1hr spin
1.25hr swim

Spin!

Arghhhh, evil pool closures! Really I should have expected this, but I forgot it would probably happen (it is the time of year for that sort of work to be done - there was no masters swim for the 2 weeks I was in Cayman either, and unfortunately my OTHER main swimming option, the City College TNYA workout, is closed till further notice! Columbia gym of course closed all weekend; I'll look into Riverbank, but it's always complicated to figure out what hours they really are open. I guess I will have to fall back on the most easily accessed option, TNYA workouts at John Jay - I avoid swimming there usually as it's crowded and even the slow lane often is swimming 100s on 1:40, too fast for me, but it looks to me as though (MIRACULOUSLY) John Jay workouts will be proceeding on regular schedule. I can go to the "low-pressure zone" workout from 12:30-1:30, which has all slower lane intervals - alas, there really is no obvious way for me to do the whole workout I really wanted to tomorrow, namely 1hr swim, 2hr spin, 2hr run, but I can spin 9:30-11:30, jog over to John Jay, swim 12:30-1:30 and then do my 2hr run in Central Park - that will work, I think. Hmmm, the complexities always seem daunting so close to race time - I must ponder what other options would be, might be I should retool the whole structure of the weekend - I definitely want to go to Joanna's 10am spin tomorrow, but other than that I'd be fairly flexible....

(The real inconvenience is that other than one more 1hr swim, what I really ideally would have this week is 15-20min swims adjacent to short other workouts, for which Chelsea Piers is perfect - but there is nothing I can do about this! Hmmm, maybe I can pay for a lap swim that I could pop into on Tues or Wed at Columbia - this is something to look into also.)

Anyway, spin today was SUPER, I haven't exercised all week due to MASSIVE fatigue and other obligations, but of course a great hour of spinning made me feel normal again for the first time all week! Even had a couple minutes of zone 5a/5b at the end of the final "hill" - it was good, my cycling fitness is really better now than it has ever been (hahaha, that's not saying that much - but really it's pretty good!). I was going to swim after, but obviously pool is closed through next weekend so it was a no-go.

1hr spin (mostly zones 2-3, some z4-5b)

Brief update

Disconcerting to have three days off exercise, but travel and recovery from travel have superseded other needs. Still haven't finished unpacking from Monday night return, need to try and get that stuff put away before I go to bed this evening. Tomorrow I will do some exercise, I'm looking forward to it; today I had a near-disaster regarding bicycle transportation that I chronicled on my other blog!

It is disgustingly humid in NYC today (only mid-70s F, but 90% humidity), and I am not sorry not to be running this evening. Really it is going to be humid for days still to come, nothing to be done about that really....)

DONE!

OK, not really - 2 more weeks before race day - but the hard part is now over. That ride can only be described as grueling (left hand still not working quite right). Toes never got super-painful: I've really been working on pedal stroke (HEELS DOWN!) and it's paying off. But hands were mighty sore, despite time in aerobars, and so was bottom (not a euphemism for more delicate unmentionables, just the place where the Sitz bones rest on the [in this case overly wide] saddle). And it was GRUESOMELY warm and windy. Ugh! I did 5 x the East End loop (it's c. 19mi), the first 10 miles on each counterclockwise loop you're just TOILING - the lift you get in the last bit really doesn't make up for the horror of the first part.

As I came in view of the beach parking lot where B. picks me up, my odometer was at 111.8 - I felt like I HAD to see 112 after all that production (112 is the length of the ironman ride, only in this case it is quite different terrain and will take me considerably longer than the training ride did) - so I took the turn and rode a bit past the entrance to the lot. As soon as I saw the number change, I just STOPPED - could not persuade myself to get back on bike to ride the .15mi back, just walked it in, despite the fact that I know this provokes questions and concern from well-intentioned onlookers!...

112mi, 6:40, c. 16.8mph

(I hit my 20hr week! 20:06 to be precise. Will write more at some other juncture when my left hand is working properly!)

Sea swim!

I have to thank B. for this one - I really didn't feel like getting out there, but he was resolute in not letting me forget the fact that I would want to do it much less tomorrow afternoon after my long hot morning ride, and that if I really wanted to hit the magic number I needed to log half an hour of swimming before supper today!

:31 sea swim

Double spin!

That was super. No double spin today at Revolutions, so I went to World Gym and did an hour on my own before the 10am spin class, which was very good: work intervals in a pyramid, 1:00 (:30), 2:00 (1:00), 3:00 (1:30), 4:00 (2:00) and back down, with varying "terrains."

2hr spin

Spin!

Hahaha, I was shooting for 3hr but really 2hr was quite sufficient! I will see how else I can make up the "missing" hour to reach the magic 20....

(Went over to World Gym and did it on a bike in the spin studio there - it was very good, they are nice newish bikes and it is easier for me to stay focused when I'm out of the house.)

2hr total
4 x 15min alternating 1:00 seated and 1:00 standing (high zone 2/some zone 3)

Now I am going to do half an hour of meditation and also my back stretching exercises - saying it here to make sure I actually do them - I think I will be sorry if I don't do them pretty much every day between now and my race, otherwise while running when tired I really have a tight sore spot where I pulled that muscle last year (spinal erector). Not acutely painful, but very tight and at its worst as though I have a sort of tingling phantom hot dog glued vertically onto my back!

A GIFT!

OK, that was a true gift. It is rainy season here, and that is the one thing that can make it non-torrid enough to run OUTSIDE IN THE DAYTIME! True bliss. Not physically blissful exactly - tons of chafing and blisters due to ankle-high puddles, sore back, trudge-like pace that is very hard on my knees. But psychologically purely pleasurable and easy - what fun! Ran over to Camana Bay where I usually do laps on the little road around the international school, but an apologetic security guard told me the road was closed to outsiders when school was in session, so I ran along the bypass, up and back along the Snug Harbor road and then around the Safe Haven loop. Amazing lot of seabirds there, out on the golf course I suppose because of the rain: several snowy egrets, and a bunch of what I think are black-necked stilts. (Plus of course the inevitable chickens and grackles, and several other species I don't usually see and couldn't identify!)

It is a snail's pace, alas, but I am very happy to get that one done so painlessly. I am still with a yen for a 20-hour week; in order to make that happen, I will need to do a three-hour trainer ride this afternoon as well, so it was incredible to be able to do this one outdoors. Short treadmill runs are fine for intervals, but one of the reasons I like running is that it's good for the soul - the long treadmill run is definitely NOT good for the soul, more like a trial of willpower!

2:03, 10mi

Hot yoga!

Really it is a bit naughty, but my heart QUAILED at the thought of the willpower required to do a spin workout at home - tired legs, but really more just that I wanted to get out of the house and have someone else tell me exactly what to do! It was lovely - the one-hour class feels too short when I'm really doing a lot of hot yoga, but today it was exactly what I needed. Highly beneficial.

1hr hot yoga

Stroke and stride!

Very glad that today's race wasn't canceled (the weather was beautiful but WARM) - it is a lovely little race, and the swimming at Sunset House is just beautiful. Swam about 22 minutes beforehand so as to get in something more of a workout; then 600m (I think it was a bit long, buoys had shifted - anyway, around 16min) and 2mi run (c. 10min miles - WARM miles!). Good day of exercise.

:22 swim, :36 swim/run

Treadmill....

Pains me to have missed all this great running weather in NYC!  Anyway, decent 2hr treadmill session at World Gym. :50 easy jog @5.4, :40 jog with random inclines @5.2, :30 walk with random steeper inclines at 3.4mph.

Spin!

Alas, my mega-week is not shaping up very mega! Doing the long ride on Sunday leaves you rather lackluster for the first few days of the new week...

I did the warmup on one of my hard Spinervals disks, but I didn't have vim to do the real workout, so I just rode out the full hour in zone 2. Glad to have gotten in some time on bike, anyway, even if shorter and less intense than I had originally hoped for.

1hr spin (z2)

Swim!

Hahahaha, I did NOT get up properly when my alarm went off, even though really I was awake - I stood in the living-room like a statue, torn between desire to meet up with sea swimmers and desire to go back to bed - bed won! Then I dallied too long, and by the time I should have been starting my spin, I realized I was quite wheezy (consequence of a mildly stressful phone call I needed to make, I think - it is goofy but true that even minor emotional stress triggers asthma). Will hope to do that workout later if wheeziness subsides, but prudence said that I should just have a nice little swim instead - did 20 minutes of drills in the irregularly shaped pool and then 20 minutes of swimming in the sea.

:40 swim

Thoughts on pacing

(Really I am procrastinating, I need to get outside for a sea swim momentarily!)

Hard to predict Ironman paces - too many factors. The most obvious big one is weather - my bike time won't be affected hugely by warm versus cool weather (though it will be slowed if there's heavy rain due to caution on descents), but it potentially makes a huge difference to run pace.

Running the numbers just now, I'm thinking along these lines.

It's a long transition in Wisconsin, at least 10 minutes for each, maybe longer.

Swim will probably come in around 1:45. I am a fairly consistent swimmer and take a very easy pace on the longer swims; the goal is to come out of the water as fresh as possible. Say 1:40-1:50 anyway. Will hope for some good stretches of drafting.

Bike pace is very difficult to predict. Minimum pace of 14.0mph would yield a bike split of 7:59; realistic maximum pace of 15.6mph yields 7:10. If I have a sub-7:00 split I have ridden too fast and will pay for it on the run! Will use a HR cap for pacing (135-38, mid-zone 2 - 135 for first half, 138 for second), but hills inevitably bump up HR.

Run pace is temperature-dependent and also related to whether or not I have used good judgment on the bike. I am pretty sure I can hold minimum 14:00/mi. pace as a mix of jogging and walking, which would give a run split of 6:06:48 (assuming you make the bike cutoffs, you still have 6:30 to finish the marathon, and I think that I am in good nick as far as making cutoffs goes). If I am having a great day and the weather permits, I would be looking at a top speed of 12:30/mi. (It is very different from running an open marathon - marathon PR is 4:16, and really I should be able to go quite a bit faster than that if I train towards that end, as I was much hampered by undiagnosed asthma - I'm hoping to run a sub-4:00 marathon sometime in the next few years.) That would give a split of 5:27.

Adding in transitions, the absolute best-case scenario is then something like 14:45, with a more realistic finishing time of 16:00-16:20. 17:00 is the official cutoff, and I think I should be able to make it. Now I am just superstitiously hoping that nothing bad happens in the way of illness, injury or other calamity in the intervening weeks!

Hot yoga!

Hot yoga was VERY hot. Good class. Finally got some decent-quality sleep last night, though not enough of it (have to get up early this week to execute training plan, figured I'd better start today). My only major complaint about Ironman training is that it means I can't do nearly as much yoga as I would like! I was allowed to do it today because it is a recovery day....

1.25hr hot yoga